Chimeric antigen receptor natural killer (CAR-NK) cell design and engineering for cancer therapy

Summary

Natural killer (NK) cells are specialized immune cells that can be genetically manipulated to produce capable effector cells for adoptive cellular therapy of cancer patients due to their rapid detection and lysis of malignant cells. However, biological and technical barriers to gene delivery into NK cells have slowed advances significantly.

Premise

Expectation

These encouraging results will aid scientists and physicians in developing more effective NK cell uses in clinical therapy. In particular, employing CARs to guide NK cells offers great potential for cancer immunotherapy.

Methodology

Various preclinical and a limited number of clinical studies using CAR-NK cells show promising results: efficient elimination of target cells without side effects, such as cytokine release syndrome and neurotoxicity which are seen in CAR-T therapie

Conclusion

This study focuses on the details of CAR-NK technology, including the design of efficient and safe CAR constructs and associated NK cell engineering techniques: the vehicles to deliver the CAR-containing transgene, detection methods for CARs, as well as NK cell sources and NK cell expansion. It is a useful lecture to get an outlook on how these approaches may transform current clinical products and protocols for cancer treatment.

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Scientific article publishing date: 1/5/2021

Article identifier BSC22_412EN.

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